No, thank you.
If Callum hadn’t scared off any and all of my would-be suitors, I would have done the job myself.
“You three can go now,” I said, trying to put a hint of Callum—understated authority and uncompromising power—in my voice.
Not one of them moved.
Since I obviously wasn’t good at commanding their fear and respect, I tried to appeal to their rationality. “I’m fine. I’m safe. The outside threat just went poof.” Unfortunately, this seemed to be falling on completely deaf ears. Jeff was gone, and if anyone had a claim to me, it was Devon, but our age-mates just stood there, flanking my position like the threat hadn’t abated.
If I’d opened up my bond, I might have been able to figure out why, but I also would have been devoured whole by the power that flowed through the entire pack. I was connected to each of them through Callum’s Mark, but just living with the pack had me treading water for every breath of independence I managed to take.
All of which meant that I had to rely on more subtle methods of finding out the things that I needed to know.
“Jeff’s gone, and you’re all acting like the threat is still here,” I said. “Would I be correct in guessing that means that there is an outside threat? And would this be the same outside threat that has Callum insisting I be inside every day by dark?”
Devon groaned. The other three just exchanged looks. I’d promised Ali I wouldn’t push things, and that was the only reason I wasn’t out scouring our territory for the threat, slipping out my bedroom window at night to get a good look at whatever it was that came out with the moon—besides the obvious, of course. Weres could Shift anyplace, anytime, but it was harder for them to stay human at nighttime, especially during that time of the month.
But because I was Pack, I was safe. Even when they Shifted. Even when the moon was full.
Or so I’d been told, over and over again, for as long as I could remember.
“The threat isn’t internal.” As the words left my mouth, I transitioned from trying to convince myself to treating the entire situation as a giant logic puzzle. “And it’s probably not a human.” That much went without saying; no mere human could put an entire werewolf pack on high alert. “Whatever is putting the growl in your growlers isn’t a foreign wolf, either, because it wouldn’t take the lot of you more than an hour to send him back to his own alpha, tail between his legs. Unless, of course, he was a lone wolf, in which case Callum would take care of it himself.”
Weres were pack animals, and nine times out of ten, loners were loners for a reason. Without psychic bonds to others of their kind, werewolves had a tendency to go Rabid. Give in to the desire to hunt. Hunt more than rabbits or deer. Given my history, it made perfect sense that the pack wouldn’t want me to know if a wolf on our lands was on the verge of madness, but if that was the case, the whole thing would have been over and done with in seconds.
Werewolves policed their own, and a wolf that hunted humans was as good as dead.
“No, it has to be something bigger than that,” I mused. “Something that you all see as a threat but that Callum won’t let you eliminate. Something that makes you want to protect me, even though I don’t need your protection.”
All four of them bristled at that one—even Dev. He just got over it quicker.
“Gentlemen, I think I’ve got this from here,” he said, and with a wave of one manicured hand and a glint of steel in his eyes, he sent our age-mates on their way before I could trick them into revealing anything I didn’t already know.
“You did that on purpose,” I told him.
Devon, his posture and body language still leaking dominance, snorted. “Darn tootin’. If you poke enough angry bears with sticks, someday you’re going to get burned, sweetheart.”
I was tempted to mock him for mixing his metaphors, but I didn’t. In normal circumstances, Devon would have been on my side, hunting up answers and pushing the limits of my promise to Ali. The fact that he wasn’t just made me want to know more.
“Ah, right on time,” Devon said.
I realized that Callum was standing between us. He had a way of appearing out of nowhere, silent and deadly, and the carefully neutral expression on his face made me reconsider the wisdom of baiting him in the first place.
“I take it you’re here about algebra?” I asked him. Callum had a pesky habit of knowing what I was going to do before I did it, and there wasn’t a thing that went down in his territory that escaped his notice.
“A moment, please, Devon?” Callum asked, his tone perfectly pleasant. Devon nodded, his eyes cast downward as he stepped aside. The alpha’s effect on his wolves was immediate and overpowering.
Bless my human immunity.
“Bryn.”
That wasn’t what I expected him to say. I expected him to yell-without-yelling. To narrow his eyes at me. To grab my chin in his hand and force me to meet his most uncompromising gaze.
He didn’t. Instead, all he said was my name. My stomach twisted sharply. Something was wrong.
“Ali?”
“She’s fine now. There were some complications. She’s on bed rest.”
The pack had its own doctor, a werewolf who’d been trained in the 1800s but did his best to keep up with modern medicine of both the human and veterinary varieties. In the past two centuries, he’d overseen more than his fair share of births, and it stood to reason that he knew what he was talking about. Besides, it wasn’t like Ali could go to a normal hospital, not when her baby was anything but.
Blood. Blood-blood-blood-blood—
I tried not to think about the bad thing. I tried not to think about women, just like Ali, who hadn’t survived. I tried not to picture myself hiding under the sink, terrified and alone, knowing there wasn’t a single thing I could do to stop death when it came knocking on my door.
Callum brushed my hair out of my face, forcing my mind to the present. “She’ll be fine, Bryn.” He paused, and my Mark hummed in a way that made me wonder if his stomach was twisting, too. “I promise you, Ali will be fine.”
Werewolves didn’t make promises lightly. Callum, as alpha, was bound by his word. I really wanted to believe him, but there was no way he could know for sure. Even Callum wasn’t psychic.
His lips curved upward, ever so slightly—half warning, half smile. “I also promise, little Bronwyn, that for the next three weeks until the baby is born, you won’t so much as sneeze out of turn. You’ll go to school. You’ll go home. You can make as many paper fire hydrants as you want, but you’ll stop pushing it.”